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Australians who won't unlock their phones could face ten years in jail

nakedsecurity.sophos.com

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Re: Australians who won't unlock their phones could face ten years in jail

#61

Post by ball_of_lint »

refurb wrote: post #49
tessi3r wrote: post #3

Seems like the only logical solution is to carry a hammer to destroy your phone if necessary. If the heat hasn't told you they want your phone, there's nothing legally stopping you from destroying your own property if you see them coming...

Yeah, the court would never figure that one out and charge with destruction of evidence!

For that to stick they would need proof that there was some evidence on the phone. Since the only way to prove that something was evidence on the phone is to know what was on the phone I'd expect that to be thrown out immediately.

If they were able to get the phones contents from some other avenue then destroying the phone had no purpose.

Re: Australians who won't unlock their phones could face ten years in jail

#62

Post by emiliobumachar »

adventured wrote: post #21
ransom1538 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

US: Life sentence. If a judge orders you to unlock your laptop/phone and you don't -- it could be a life sentence. IMHO, they go around the constitution with "Contempt of court". https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/03/man-jailed-indef...

You're dramatically over-simplifying by using one example to claim it's law. That is not the US law, that's one individual instance. In fact it's unsettled legal territory. The Supreme Court has yet to settle it, and they will very likely be the final word.

That one precedent sets the most reasonable expectation of what U.S. law means in practice, unless and until overturned.

Re: Australians who won't unlock their phones could face ten years in jail

#63

Post by jpindar »

kazinator wrote: post #46

Don't keep anything sensitive on your phone, encrypted or otherwise. Keep it on some storage medium whose very existence is secret. They can't accuse you of refusing to unlock something whose whereabouts are unknown and, indeed, whose very existence is only alleged.

I'd pay extra for Android apps that have an option to force me to enter a password EVERY SINGLE TIME. Or at least provide a way to log out.

There are a few that do, but not many.

Re: Australians who won't unlock their phones could face ten years in jail

#64

Post by josephagoss »

ShorsHammer wrote: post #53
kodablah wrote: post #6

Also concerning is what they are doing towards companies (pardon the tangent): > It covers [...] device vendors [...] as long as they have "a nexus to Australia" > But what if the suspect stores the keys themselves? In that case, the government would pull out the big guns with a second kind of order called a technical capability notice. It forces communications providers to build new capabilities that would help the…

The article mentions both child abusers and terrorists yet the laws will rarely be used for that. Mandatory metadata retention was also bought in for the same reasons and has barely appeared as evidence in any subsequent cases, despite >300,000 warrantless metadata requests last year, overseen by a handful of public servants behind closed doors, in a country of 25 million people. Another very concerning law is about…

Regarding your example of this person being forced into a mental institution, are you able to provide a source? I'm interested in learning more especially as I'm living in Australia, this is quite terrifying indeed.

Re: Australians who won't unlock their phones could face ten years in jail

#65

Post by ransom1538 »

squarefoot wrote: post #55

Plausible deniability. The system should allow two (or more) passwords, one unlocks only the important stuff and one unlocks much less dangerous stuff while destroying any evidence of the first, including the multiple passwords protection layer. To add some credibility, the less dangerous data should contain something one could get in trouble for but not enough to have his life destroyed. As an example, if after bein…

Plausible deniability systems are pretty amazing but didn't seem to catch on. Truecrypt was awesome, it had hidden drives.

Edit: "didn't seem to catch on" I mean you can't do this with popular products like FileVault.

https://www.truecrypt71a.com/documentation/plausible-deniabi...

Re: Australians who won't unlock their phones could face ten years in jail

#66

Post by gambiting »

PunchTornado wrote: post #58
squarefoot wrote: post #55

Plausible deniability. The system should allow two (or more) passwords, one unlocks only the important stuff and one unlocks much less dangerous stuff while destroying any evidence of the first, including the multiple passwords protection layer. To add some credibility, the less dangerous data should contain something one could get in trouble for but not enough to have his life destroyed. As an example, if after bein…

that sounds like a really good idea and not that difficult to implement.

Truecrypt always had that - one password decrypts into your real partition, the other decrypts the prepared one, with a clear OS. It's impossible to say there is anything in the space where the hidden partition resides, and you have provided a password so at least in theory you are clear.

Re: Australians who won't unlock their phones could face ten years in jail

#67

Post by emiliobumachar »

tessi3r wrote: post #3

Seems like the only logical solution is to carry a hammer to destroy your phone if necessary. If the heat hasn't told you they want your phone, there's nothing legally stopping you from destroying your own property if you see them coming...

Independently of legal risks, please everyone keep in mind that modern cell phone batteries are a serious hazard.

Re: Australians who won't unlock their phones could face ten years in jail

#68

Post by peeters »

ransom1538 wrote: post #14
dfsegoat wrote: post #8

Genuinely curious - What is the current state / precedent for this type of situation in the US?

US: Life sentence. If a judge orders you to unlock your laptop/phone and you don't -- it could be a life sentence. IMHO, they go around the constitution with "Contempt of court". https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/03/man-jailed-indef...

Granted my source for this is The Newsroom, but IIRC contempt of court is a tool that can only be used coercively, and not punitively. In other words, if you refuse to give your password, you could be detained indefinitely for contempt. But if you forget your password, you should be released immediately. Obviously that's open to interpretation and abuse, I'm just saying contempt would only be correctly applied here if there was reason to believe a witness/suspect was withholding the information, not when they're not able to provide the information.

Re: Australians who won't unlock their phones could face ten years in jail

#69

Post by cryptonector »

squarefoot wrote: post #55

Plausible deniability. The system should allow two (or more) passwords, one unlocks only the important stuff and one unlocks much less dangerous stuff while destroying any evidence of the first, including the multiple passwords protection layer. To add some credibility, the less dangerous data should contain something one could get in trouble for but not enough to have his life destroyed. As an example, if after bein…

LEO are not stupid. If you are using tech with this feature then they'll ask for both passwords.

Re: Australians who won't unlock their phones could face ten years in jail

#70

Post by mattthebaker »

XorNot wrote: post #30
tessi3r wrote: post #3

Seems like the only logical solution is to carry a hammer to destroy your phone if necessary. If the heat hasn't told you they want your phone, there's nothing legally stopping you from destroying your own property if you see them coming...

On some level this is why I'm skeptical of all security efforts in the electronic space. Because if the government or anyone sufficiently powerful is actually after me, the first thing I'm going to do is throw my phone down the garbage disposal and blindly dd all my hard drives with zeros.

Tampering with evidence, which includes destroying evidence is also a crime. IANAL so I'm not sure at what point a phone becomes evidence, i.e. once there is a indictment, once there is a warrant, t=0, etc. John Carmack got in trouble for deleting emails in that IP case if I recall. A better privacy feature might be that the phone stores no history.
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